The apartment I live in at the moment has very thin walls, and I happen to live on the floor just below the top. Any loud noise made by anyone above or below you, as long as you’re in the same room, may easily be heard from the distance of one story away. A few weeks into 2022, on one fateful night, I was pooping in the bathroom as usual, and then my ears caught the voice of my upper floor neighbour. This neighbour was a woman in her late 20s who I believe lives alone and, based on the way she dresses when I see her in the mornings, works some kind of office job. The time was around 1 AM, I think she was on the phone with her boyfriend that night, speaking quietly, and it was hard to make much of what she was saying. I began to listen so I’d have something I could focus on other than that there was literally stuff coming out of my ass, but as I said, all of my diligent efforts fell feeble. However, at one point, raising her voice several octaves above her whispering tone, she yelled, “Why did you break your promise, huh, why did you? Didn’t you promise me?” before returning once again to a quiet whisper. After a few minutes, right after I had finished pooping, I started to hear sounds of laughing. It was a strange sound, coming after all the silent talking and all that. I was getting cold since I don’t turn the central heating on for the bathroom, but this whole event was kind of like watching a romance anime happen in real life, so I was starting to take a further interest in the entire ordeal. Up until that moment I was only listening as an outsider, she was just the company I picked for myself during my ritual, my pooping time, however, at that very moment I felt that I had to involve myself in the situation one way or another. I wiped my ass. And then, closing the toilet lid, with my bare butt exposed, I climbed up on top of the toilet, trying to stand on the edges of the toilet on the tip of my foot fingers, balancing myself. From there, standing atop my porcelain throne, I could hear her more clearly. It was then that I realized she was not laughing, but rather, crying. “Enough, I don’t want to hear more of this” she said, keeping up her crying. What followed was a “Didn’t I tell you the plans I had made for February 14 and you accepted them?” …. “It was going to be our first valentine day together.” When I realized what was going on, I nearly burst laughing at that moment, but I barely managed to contain it. I had initially thought he cheated on her or something like that and wouldn’t have expected her to cry over something extremely menial, especially since she gave me the vibe of an independent, strong woman, staying alone, working all by herself. But I guess reality is not fiction. I assume that that she hung up at some point around that as she stopped talking and I didn’t hear anything from her but her silent crying. I listened to her sobbing for like 5 minutes, and it sounded better than classical music to my ears. I enjoyed every second of it. But you know, even dessert starts to taste overwhelming when you eat too much. Then I flushed, my toilet made an obnoxiously loud sound, and her crying stopped.